Catalytic Reforming Catalyst Development Process

Catalyst is one of the key elements of catalytic reforming, which is used to promote molecular rearrangement of raw oil, promote aromatic hydrocarbon generation and alkane isomerization. Over the years, countries have attached great importance to the research and development of catalysts. Since the first catalytic reforming unit, the hydro-reforming unit, was built and put into operation in the United States in 1940, the development of reforming catalysts has mainly gone through three stages.

The first stage
From 1940 to 1949, catalysts (MoO3/Al2O3 and Cr2O3/Al2O3) with molybdenum and chromium metal oxides as active components were mainly used in industrial devices. Compared with modern platinum reforming catalysts, its activity and aromatization selectivity are relatively low, especially the aromatization selectivity of alkanes is low, the activity stability is poor, and the operation cycle is short. After 4 to 12 hours of reaction, it needs Catalyst burnt regeneration.

The second stage
The period from 1949 to 1967 was a period of revolutionary change in catalytic reforming catalysts. In 1949, the U.S. Universal Oil Company (UOP) successfully developed a reforming catalyst containing precious metal platinum, and built and put into production the first platinum reforming (PLATIFORMING) industrial device. The successful invention of the Pt/Al2O3 reforming catalyst created a new era of catalytic reforming new era. Pt/Al2O3 catalyst has high activity (more than 10 times higher than MoO3/Al2O3 catalyst activity, more than 100 times higher than Cr2O3/Al2O3 catalyst), good selectivity, high yield of liquid products, good stability, continuous reaction cycle Long, the above-mentioned many advantages led to the rapid development of Pt/Al2O3 catalysts in the 1950s and 1960s, and quickly replaced catalysts containing molybdenum and chromium oxides.

The third stage
In 1967, Chevron Corporation of the United States first announced the successful invention of the Pt-Re/Al2O3 bimetallic reforming catalyst, and put it into industrial application in the El Paso refinery, named RHEN1FORMING. Since then reforming catalysts have entered the third stage of the development process. The Pt-Re/Al2O3 bimetallic reforming catalyst not only improves the activity, but also significantly increases the selectivity, and more importantly, the stability is doubled compared with the Pt/Al2O3 catalyst, so that the reformer can operate at a lower pressure (1 .5~2.0MPa) for long-term operation, the selectivity of hydrocarbon aromatization is significantly improved.
The successful development of Pt—Re/Al2O3 bimetallic catalyst has once again made a new improvement in catalytic reforming technology. For more than 20 years, countries have successively researched and developed a variety of dual (multi) metal reforming catalysts, such as Pt-Ir, Pt-Sn, Pt-Ge series catalysts, etc.
The performance of the catalyst has been continuously improved, replacing the Pt/Al2O3 catalyst relatively quickly.